I could tell that Mr Bluenose liked the story of the White Woman of Waharoa. He nodded at the bit where she hummed at Freddy Jones.
“Does the door of your wardrobe swing open after you have gone to bed?” he asked.
“How did you know?”
Mr Bluenose shook his head.
“It used to,” I told him, “but I stick the back of the chair against it, under the handle, so nobody can open it from inside.”
“Perhaps you should teach that trick to poor Freddy Jones.”
“His mother came to see my father,” I said. “Then Mrs Carter and Mrs Harsant. They said they didn’t want me telling their children any more stories if they were going to give them nightmares.
“After they’d gone, Dad made me tell him the story of the White Woman of Waharoa, and he said he was scared to go to bed in case his wardrobe opened its mouth and ate him.”
“He was making it up. He hasn’t even got a wardrobe in his room, just a big chest of drawers. Dad hangs his clothes and his dressing gown in the big cupboard off the kitchen.”
“What about when he is sitting there alone at night, reading the paper, after you have gone to bed? Isn’t he scared of the big cupboard then?”
“He says ghosts only seem to come around once you’ve put out the light and got into bed.”
“Not a single ghost I know likes the light,” said Mr Bluenose.
Next day, when I went down to the store for our paper, Mr Bryce said, “Have you ever heard the story about the haunted house in Ward Street?”
I looked to see if he was grinning, but Mr Bryce turned and bent down to open the sugar bin behind the counter. “Yes,” he said, “once upon a time there was a ghost who used to haunt a house down your street.”
“Which one? Freddy Jones’s?”
Mr Bryce started weighing out some brown paper bags of sugar. As he took the scoop out of the bin and filled a bag, some grains of sugar fell on the floor. I could hear them crunching under his shoes. Mr Bryce shook his head and sighed. “I hate that sound,” he said. “But I can never seem to weigh out sugar without spilling some.”
“Tell me some more about the haunted house?” I got the broom and swept behind the counter. Mr Bryce shifted his feet, and I swept there. He lifted one foot and I swept the sole, then the other, and I swept it, too. “There!”
“Thank you.” said Mr Bryce. “Where Mr Carter grows his potatoes was once a house. A haunted house.”
Mr Bryce nodded, looked at the scales, and folded the top of the brown paper bag of sugar. “Three pounds exactly. Sometimes you get it right first go.”
“Why was the house haunted?”
“Because of a murder. There was a wardrobe in the house which ate people. It ate a little boy.”
“I think I know this story,” I told Mr Bryce.
“I haven’t ever told it to anyone before. The people who lived in the house were so scared of the wardrobe, they packed up and went sharemilking over towards Te Aroha. Nobody else would live in the haunted house. If you walked past at midnight, you’d see lights moving through the empty rooms, and you’d hear a voice wailing. People said that if you looked in the windows you’d see a woman with a face like a white turnip looking back at you. They called her the White Woman of Waharoa.”
“What happened?”
“Constable Tiddy came down from Matamata, and couldn’t find anybody in the haunted house. But somebody said they’d watched him through the window, and he was too scared to open the big wardrobe in case it ate him. So people still avoided the haunted house. Nobody would walk past it at night. And then, one Saturday night, after the pictures, it burned down.”
“Who set fire to it?”
“People said it must have been the White Woman.”
“Didn’t the fire brigade come down from Matamata and save it?”
“There was no fire brigade then. And the hoses over at the dairy factory weren’t long enough to reach all the way to Ward Street, so the haunted house burnt to the ground. And ever since then, Mr Carter has grown his potatoes there. He reckons he got a good crop the first few years, because of all the ashes.”
“What if they were the ashes of the little boy?”
“I suppose they could be,” said Mr Bryce. “Or the ashes of the White Woman of Waharoa. There! Thank goodness, that’s the last of the sugar done. If you sweep up the floor and the soles of my shoes again, I’ll give you a couple of boiled lollies.”
I was in a hurry, but just had time to sweep the floor and Mr Bryce’s shoes. “Thank you,” I told him. “And thank you for the story.”
“I pay you for your stories,” said Mr Bryce. “How about paying me back the two boiled lollies for mine.”
“That’s different,” I told him. “Anyway, it’s not your story. I’ve heard bits of it before.” And I ran to look for Freddy Jones and the others, to tell them the story about the White Woman of Waharoa was true and, if they didn’t believe me, they could ask Mr Bryce.